gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
   4
   5 * Added support for ARM V6.
   6
   7 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
   8
   9 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
  10
  11 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
  12   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
  13
  14 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
  15   definitions created by ".req".
  16
  17 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
  18
  19 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
  20   information with GNU extensions.
  21
  22 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
  23
  24 * Added support for v850e1.
  25
  26 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
  27   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
  28   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
  29   switch disables the optimization.
  30
  31 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
  32   existing -non_shared option.
  33
  34 Changes in 2.14:
  35
  36 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
  37
  38 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
  39
  40 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
  41
  42 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
  43   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
  44
  45 * Support for SH2E added.
  46
  47 * GASP has now been removed.
  48
  49 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
  50   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
  51
  52 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
  53
  54 Changes in 2.13:
  55
  56 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
  57   and FR500 included.
  58
  59 * Support for DLX processor added.
  60
  61 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
  62   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
  63
  64 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
  65   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
  66   the currently specified base.
  67
  68 Changes in 2.12:
  69
  70 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
  71
  72 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
  73
  74 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
  75   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
  76   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
  77   compatibility.
  78
  79 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
  80   the ARM assembler.
  81
  82 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
  83   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
  84
  85 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
  86   but still works for compatability.
  87
  88 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
  89   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
  90   -n will turn on the warning.
  91
  92 Changes in 2.11:
  93
  94 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
  95
  96 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
  97
  98 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
  99
 100 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 101
 102 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 103
 104 * Support for IA-64.
 105
 106 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 107
 108 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 109
 110 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 111
 112 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 113   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 114   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 115
 116 Changes in 2.10:
 117
 118 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 119   operand when altering the flags field.
 120
 121 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 122
 123 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 124
 125 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 126
 127 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 128
 129 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 130
 131 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 132
 133 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 134
 135 * picoJava architecture support added.
 136
 137 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 138
 139 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 140   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 141
 142 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 143
 144 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 145
 146 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 147
 148 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 149   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 150   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 151   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 152
 153 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 154
 155 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 156
 157 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 158
 159 * i960 ELF support added.
 160
 161 * ARM ELF support added.
 162
 163 Changes in 2.9:
 164
 165 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 166
 167 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 168   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 169
 170 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 171
 172 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 173   listing.
 174
 175 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 176
 177 Changes in 2.8:
 178
 179 * BeOS support added.
 180
 181 * MIPS16 support added.
 182
 183 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 184
 185 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 186
 187 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 188   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 189
 190 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 191   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 192   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 193   all.
 194
 195 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 196
 197 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 198   conditionals in listings.
 199
 200 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 201   the symbol is already defined.
 202
 203 Changes in 2.7:
 204
 205 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 206   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 207   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 208   added.
 209
 210 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 211
 212 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 213
 214 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 215
 216 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 217
 218 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 219
 220 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 221   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 222   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 223   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 224
 225 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 226
 227 Changes in 2.6:
 228
 229 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 230
 231 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 232   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 233   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 234
 235 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 236
 237 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 238
 239 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 240
 241 Changes in 2.4:
 242
 243 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 244
 245 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 246
 247 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 248   debugging support.
 249
 250 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 251
 252 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 253   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 254   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 255   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 256
 257 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 258
 259 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 260   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 261
 262 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 263
 264 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 265   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 266
 267 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 268   Paul Kranenburg.
 269
 270 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 271   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 272
 273 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 274
 275 Changes in 2.3:
 276
 277 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 278
 279 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 280
 281 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 282   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 283   again too.
 284
 285 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 286   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 287   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 288   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 289   in the "dist" directory.
 290
 291 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 292   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 293   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 294
 295 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 296   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 297   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 298   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 299
 300 * Irix 5 support.
 301
 302 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 303   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 304
 305 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 306   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 307   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 308   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 309
 310 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 311   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 312   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 313   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 314
 315 Changes in 2.2:
 316
 317 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 318
 319 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 320   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 321   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 322   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 323   reliable.
 324
 325 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 326   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 327   messages about "internal errors".
 328
 329 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 330   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 331
 332 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 333   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 334   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 335   known.
 336
 337 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 338   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 339   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 340   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 341   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 342   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 343   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 344
 345 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 346   support is in progress.
 347
 348 Changes in 2.1:
 349
 350 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 351   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 352
 353 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 354   with gcc now.
 355
 356 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 357   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 358
 359 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 360   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 361   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 362
 363 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 364
 365 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 366
 367 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 368
 369 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 370
 371 Changes in 2.0:
 372
 373 * Mostly bug fixes.
 374
 375 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 376
 377 Changes in 1.94:
 378
 379 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 380   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 381   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 382   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 383   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 384   fully merged yet.)
 385
 386 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 387   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 388
 389 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 390   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 391
 392 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 393   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 394   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 395   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 396   coming.
 397
 398 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 399
 400 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 401   Youngdale.
 402
 403 Changes in 1.93.01:
 404
 405 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 406
 407 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 408
 409 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 410   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 411   can be distinguished from the register.
 412
 413 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 414   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 415
 416 \f
 417 Local variables:
 418 fill-column: 79
 419 End: